One of the hardest parts of running your own restaurant or quick service shop is determining what you should sell. Maybe you started with a simple idea, but customer feedback and new inspirations have drastically expanded your product offering. You could make the argument that having more options on your menu means satisfying more customers with different tastes. The reality is, too much choice can be overwhelming, and providing too many options may actually be hurting your business.

The Importance of Specialization

Some people go out to eat knowing exactly what they want, and make every effort to go somewhere that they know will serve them whatever it is they’re craving. Others prefer to be inspired by whatever they see on the menu and prefer not to get too specific, only to be let down if they can’t decide what the best choice is.

When you include a lot of items on your menu, you might cater to a large amount of people in the first group. If you can serve whatever it is your customer is yearning for, then maybe they’ll think of your restaurant first when they want to eat out, right? The problem is, if you dabble in a little bit of everything, you lose focus on what you’re best at.

There are lots of restaurants that specialize in a certain type of food. The more different foods you serve, the more competitors you amass. If you’re serving both Chinese takeout and donairs, you suddenly have a lot of little shops to compete with who offer either takeout or donairs – and your customer might instead consider one of them to satisfy their cravings, especially if they have just a little bit more experience making donairs than you do.

Instead, focus on what you’re best at. You can’t please everyone, but you can put in extra effort to wow the customers who are interested in eating what you can cook well. Sometimes it’s just more valuable to be “the shop with the best curry in the city” rather than “the shop that has a little bit of everything”.

The Science Behind Choosing

Once you’ve decided what kind of cuisine to specialize in, you still might need to restrain yourself in the variety of dishes you create. Have you ever sat in a restaurant with a seemingly never-ending menu, without a clue of what you should order? It turns out being overwhelmed with choice can cause us to freeze when it comes to making a decision.

Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper conducted studies on how choice affects purchasing behaviour by displaying two different tasting booths at an upscale grocery store: one offered twenty-four types of jam to try, and the other offered only six flavours. While more people stopped to taste at least one type of jam when they had more options, they were much more likely to actually buy a jar of jam when there were fewer tasting options. 30% of customers who tried a sample from the selection of six different jams ended up buying any jar of jam. In contrast, only 3% of shoppers who tried from the selection of twenty-four jams were compelled to make a purchase!

If you’re thinking, “But my food shop doesn’t sell jam,” maybe this scenario is more relatable. Imagine if you had your menu posted in your window, and people walking by glanced at it but didn’t read it in depth. They might be more compelled to enter your shop if they saw a huge list of meals, but find themselves overwhelmed when it comes time to deciding what they want to order and being unable to settle on just one thing. Similarly, someone might quickly check how long your menu is on your website before booking a table, but could struggle to pick a dish once they’re actually seated in your restaurant.

If you don’t know what you want, too much choice can be a bad thing.

Still not convinced? Neither were the researchers, so they conducted a second study among university students. The students were told they could complete an essay assignment for extra credit; not writing the essay would not affect their grade. Some students were then given six discussion questions to choose from as their essay topic and others were given thirty questions. The group with fewer question options was more likely to complete the extra credit work and the quality of the work was generally better than those who had more essay topic options.

As human beings, we’re excited by the idea of choices, and having more items to choose from is appealing. However, we quickly lose motivation when it comes to narrowing down those choices to just one selection. When there are so many other options we could have picked, it becomes easy for us to doubt whether we made the best choice.

Sheena S. Iyengar, Rachel E. Wells, and Barry Schwartz explored this idea in more depth by studying university students applying for their first post-graduation jobs. They sorted the students into two groups: maximizers, who sought to find a job that they considered the best, and satisficers, who were only looking for a job that met a certain minimum criteria. The maximizers worked harder in their job searches, experienced more stress, and ended up with higher paying jobs. But the satisficers, happy that they had simply found jobs meeting their expectations, were much more satisfied with their work life than the maximizers.

The maximizers in this study ended up less happy even though they were doing the best on paper, presumably because they could never be sure that what they were doing was actually the best. The same can apply to your restaurant. If one of your guests orders a plate of noodles and looks over at the next table to see a much more appealing falafel, they may start to doubt that they even picked the best cuisine. By limiting your offerings, your customers don’t have to worry about picking what they think is the absolute best – they might even be able to come back often enough to eat their way through your entire menu.

How much should I limit my offering?

If you’re still in the process of creating your menu, stop and take a careful look at what you’ve already planned. Is there some consistency between the items on your list? If you run a coffee shop, for example, you might be able to serve both sweet baked goods and sandwiches, but adding pizza into the mix may be confusing to your customers.

If you’re worried your selection might already be too broad, try observing your customers’ habits. Do many of them spend a long time staring at your menu, trying to decide what to order? Anyone can occasionally have trouble making simple decisions, but if you see this happening often, it may be a sign that you have too many products.

When cutting back on your offering, examine other ways that changing your menu can help optimize your business. Consider eliminating items that are so unique that they require a variety of ingredients that aren’t found in any of your most popular products, so that you can reduce your inventory costs at the same time.

And, when in doubt, just ask! Your guests know more about what they want than you do. Set up a contest on social media that encourages customers to voice their opinion for a chance to win a prize, or hand out survey cards with your meals. While you may receive a wide variety of answers, keep in mind you can’t make everyone happy – but at least you’ll find out what your speciality is.

The next time you’re sitting at the table of a nice restaurant, giddy with excitement when the waiter brings you your food, stop yourself before you whip out your phone and take a moment to think. Does the world really need to see another photo of avocado toast?

The reality is, no one cares what you eat.

You may think that the 226 likes you got on the last Instagram post you hashtagged with “food” tell a different story, but you’d be wrong. No one cares.

Social media has developed a strange sense of responsibility in some of us, especially millennials, to show the world what we’re eating all the time. But before your phone could take such high quality pictures, did you ever ring your friends when you sat down to eat to let them know what was on your plate? Of course you didn’t.

That’s because no one is closely monitoring all of your meals to make sure you’re eating all the right things. And aren’t you glad of that? Maybe that kale quinoa salad with blueberry-acai dressing looks impressive, but it also creates a specific image that you want to share with the world. After all, there’s a reason you’re not Instagramming that bowl of ice cream that you’re guiltily snacking on at midnight (unless, of course, it’s #vegan#glutenfree and you can just #latergram it).

Maybe your food looks nice, but does it even taste good?

How do your friends and followers even know the food was any good? Did you even eat it? We never get to see your empty plate afterward.

Even if a cook has put a lot of effort into food presentation, the best compliment you can give is by eating it all up. Maybe you should be sharing photos of your meal once it’s done instead, when all you have left to show for it is your squeaky clean plate. That couple that just sat down at the table next to you aren’t going to see that Snapchat story of your cacio e pepe, but they might ask the waiter to bring them whatever you had if you can’t stop raving about how good it was.

It must have been good enough to eat.

If you really can’t kick the habit of letting the world know that you’re sitting down to a meal, here are some suggestions for what you could be taking pictures of instead to give your photo album a bit of diversity:

The restaurant’s décor: Restaurants aren’t just about the food – they also provide customer experiences that are more memorable than simply eating at home. So instead of worrying about snapping the perfect photo before your food gets cold, use your waiting time to find something notable about your surroundings to photograph instead.

Your dining companion enjoying their food: Seeing another photo of a plate of food from above is boring. Instead, wait for the ideal moment to snap your friend slurping up a piece of spaghetti. If your argument for food photos is that it helps to promote the restaurant, you can still tag your friend as being there, but you get a much more entertaining photo of your experience.

Your view: If you’re going to all of these fancy restaurants, some of them must have a great view of a mountain or ocean from their patios. Take a picture of the nature that your food came from.

Your pile of dirty dishes: Sure, you may get to eat a beautiful plate of homemade ravioli stuffed with mushrooms and served with a goat cheese and honey sauce. But show us a picture of all the dishes you needed to make your exquisite meal, or your stovetop covered in spills after you let the oil get too hot.

Even dirty dishes can look artsy.

Your guests: Did you really make that four-course meal all for yourself? While we all need to indulge ourselves sometimes, chances are you have company at your table when you make a big spread at home. Instead of chronicling every plate you serve yourself, show how much your guests are enjoying themselves around your food.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that all those likes on your food photos mean anything. You could add #cleaneating to a photo of a deep-fried Mars bar and get similar results. So don’t worry about getting that perfect shot of your pumpkin spice latte and zucchini chocolate cake in just the right lighting with just the right filters – no one cares. Just enjoy your meal and your company. You don’t need a food photo to remind you of your happy experiences.

Looking for the best restaurants in Copenhagen? Luckily for you and your taste buds, Copenhagen is constantly welcoming new restaurants to its food scene. Here, we put some of our customers in the spotlight.

Restaurant Bodil

Bodil Restaurant is named after the location at the corner of Bodil Street and Sønder Boulevard in Copenhagen’s Vesterbro district.

Vesterbro is located just outside Copenhagen’s city center— the Inner City or Indre By (in Danish) — and next to Copenhagen Central Station, making it a very attractive place to live and hang out. Here, you can experience the Danish vibe of this area which manages to be sophisticated and laid-back at the same time. Also, it is ranked as one of the top 10 hipster neighbourhoods around the world.

Bodil Restaurant opened at the beginning of 2016 as part of Timos & Co. business (check out all their amazing places here). Timo’s ambition was to create a going-out place that he would like to visit. He based his vision on the fact that the restaurant should be in the good location with a stylish and classy interior, an interesting modern dining and wine selection where quality of the food is excellent, without the need to cost a fortune. They were featured as one of the best Copenhagen restaurants on a budget.

The menu of the restaurant varies, but here you can have a quick look how it can look (in Danish).

The wines available in Bodil are like the food – carefully selected from personal favorites with the world as a source of inspiration. So whether you love French, Italian, or Spanish wine, there is something for everyone.

Deligreco

Deligreco is a Greek food shop and takeaway place located centrally in Frederiksberg.

Frederiksberg is the fashionable part of Copenhagen with great shopping and green areas. The main boulevard is named Frederiksberg Gammel Kongevej, which was called the King’s Road before. The road brings us back in the 1620s, where the history is still visible in the buildings. Many older shops are replaced with new ones, multicultural restaurants, cafés, and eco-supermarkets.

Deligreco fits perfectly into Frederiksberg’s new vibe – you can sit in the shop and enjoy small dishes and delicacies while admiring the neighbourhood through the big window.

All of the Greek delicacies are manufactured by small local producers in the highest quality possible using traditional Greek methods. Their menu changes frequently, but you can always find the current menu on Deligreco’s website.

Salotto42

Salotto42 is a beautiful multi-concept that offers the true Italian atmosphere of a cocktail bar, tapas restaurant, jewelry store, clothing store, and barber salon in the heart of Copenhagen – Inner City. The high ceilings, huge curtains, leather armchairs, and enormous green plants create a classy interior with lots of ambience. Whether you want to stop by for an Italian cappuccino or for a delicious cocktail on Friday nights with live music in the background, this place is one of a kind.

Check out their awesome Instagram profile here to see what Salotto42 offers.

Diners have never had as many options for food as they do today. Whether they pick out a recipe from a blog and cook for themselves, order takeout using a variety of different apps, or choose to go out to a restaurant, there are still plenty of choices to make just for one meal. So with all of these options, what can you as a restaurant owner do to convince the hungry people of your city to choose your establishment to satisfy their cravings?

Offering a niche cuisine is obviously appealing; if yours is the only restaurant in the region serving a vegetarian Mexican-Ethiopian fusion, it’s easy to please those customers who are looking for exactly what you provide. But if you’re more interested in sticking to your tried and true menu, there are plenty of other ways to make your restaurant eye-catching to passers-by and memorable for your guests.

1. Create inviting views from your windows.

Have you ever walked past a store you’ve had no experience with and felt intrigued by it just because it looked so appealing from the outside? While outer appearance is important for any restaurant, especially in an area with a lot of foot traffic, you should offer a nice view to those who slow down while walking past to take a look inside. Put effort into decorating your windows with curtains or art. Have your logo pasted to the glass or hang the day’s specials in a beautiful frame.

Think about what people see when they peer through the front glass. Do they see an open kitchen with lots of action, or a disorganised layout? If you have tables pushed up to the window, make sure they are decorated nicely in a way that reflects the ambience of your restaurant.

2. Keep your patio looking fresh.

Once you’ve improved the view into your restaurant, it’s time to think about other aspects potential diners encounter from the outside. If you have a patio, especially one near pedestrian traffic, be sure to make it look enticing. There are plenty of creative ideas available on sites like Pinterest, but there are a few classic tricks you can try as well.

You can create a romantic feel by hanging lights, or a cozy environment by having a fire pit. Providing both shady and sunny spots gives your guests the option to dine however they’re most comfortable. Placing funny or clever signs on your patio can bring a smile to the face of a passer-by and even be convincing enough for them to give your restaurant a try.

3. Offer unique drinks.

Craft beer is all the rage and wine tastings are ever popular. While there will always be diners who stick to the drinks they know, it’s no longer an option to simply serve the most common beer staples. Dining out is an occasion to try new things, and those who don’t want to take the risk with their meal may instead opt for a drink with which they aren’t familiar.

Be inventive with your drink offers.

The unique drinks menu shouldn’t stop at beer, though. Plenty of millennials, among the most impactful consumers right now, have outgrown their student drinking habits and are more interested in pairing the right wines with their food. And while some cocktails will always remain classics, there are endless combinations that have yet to be discovered, let alone sold – get creative! If it’s right for your restaurant, it may be worth hiring a sommelier or other specialist to help jazz up your drinks menu.

4. Put some extra effort into food presentation.

It’s not uncommon nowadays to see someone whip out their phone and snap a quick picture of their meal before digging in. It’s not because they want to let everyone know they’re eating right now; most photos are taken to capture a beautiful sight, and that applies to food as well. No one is going to take a picture of a boring plate of spaghetti with sauce slopped on top. Take the time to present your food in a unique way. Even if you aren’t a fan of food photos, having a satisfied customer share their #foodporn photo is still great (free!) exposure for your restaurant. You never know – you may be serving an influencer who is about to drive thousands of guests to your place!

Just like a beautiful landscape, expect pictures to be taken of your beautiful food.

5. Come up with creative dish solutions.

Now that you’ve come up with an ingenious trick to make all of your vegetables look like flowers, how else can you make the actual presentation of the food memorable? Try getting creative with what you’re serving your food on. Consider the style of your dishes in relation to the overall atmosphere of your restaurant. Or try skipping the plate entirely – serving charcuterie on something unconventional like a bathroom tile is a little more exciting than a simple cutting board.

At this point the mason-jar-as-a-cocktail-glass has become somewhat cliché, but there are still opportunities to throw a bit of a vintage vibe into your dishes. If you’re serving coffee in modern cups, give your guests their milk in an old-fashioned creamer. You can easily pick up these and other unique pieces at second-hand stores and spice up your food presentation with only a small investment.

6. Hire exceptional staff.

All your aesthetic details will quickly be overshadowed if your guests receive terrible service during their meal. An unpleasant experience with restaurant staff can ruin a dining experience and often prompts negative reviews and word-of-mouth. Above all, make sure your wait staff are friendly and your cooks are trained to handle customer requests. The most memorable part of a meal is often the human interactions that take place during. You can read some of our tips for keeping your employees, and your customers, happy here.

7. Embrace technology.

There are so many benefits to using technology in your restaurant that it should be incorporated right from the get-go. With the right solutions, you can track your customers’ preferences and be prepared to offer them a great experience every time they come back. What makes a restaurant stand out more in someone’s mind than personalised service? You can also use technology to train staff more quickly and efficiently, manage inventory, reduce food waste, and create a unique ambience.

If you think your restaurant could use an eye-catching pop, be sure to give some of these ideas a try. In no time you could become the place that everyone can’t stop talking about!

Technology has given us more variety in meals than ever before. Bloggers regularly post recipes tailored to a multitude of diets, diverse groceries can be bought online, and there are dozens of apps to consult to order food straight to your door.

All of these innovations can be taken advantage of while at home. But what about actually going to a restaurant? When it’s so easy to get the food you want simply through a few clicks, the prospect of going out may seem daunting to many. Once you’ve decided what you want to eat, you still have to find a restaurant that serves the right cuisine, within your budget, within the distance you want to travel, with available tables, all made more complicated if you are going with friends who also have to take these considerations into account. Wouldn’t it be helpful if restaurants provided an omnichannel experience to take away the hassle that precedes a great night out?

Day-to-Day Omnichannel

Some restaurant and food chains are already making the experience of eating out more comfortable for customers. Starbucks, one of the early adopters of the omnichannel, rewards its devoted customers for their loyalty with its rewards card. The card can be reloaded via the Starbucks app or website, on the phone, or in-store, and the balance is updated automatically across all channels. So if you’re queuing for your morning coffee in your nearest Starbucks, trying to stay awake with masses of other caffeine-lovers, and you realise your rewards card may be low, you can quickly top it up on your phone before you get to the counter.

The US chain Panera Bread plans to revolutionize the restaurant industry with its new technologically advanced shops. Tired of the “one-size-fits-all” customer experience the chain was providing, founder Ron Shaich set out to tailor the service to each individual customer. Guests can now order their food from an iPad, include all sorts of customizations, and have it delivered to where they’re sitting, whether in the restaurant or out and about.

[Panera are] not just using technology for technology’s sake, but are utilizing it in a way that is enhancing the customer experience and catering to a younger demographic that increasingly uses mobile technologies and is accustomed to getting things to their own specifications quickly.

— Josh Sanburn, TIME

Fine Dining

It isn’t too difficult to satisfy a sudden need for caffeine or a sandwich craving, or even a hankering for a greasy taco, and thanks to big restaurant chains it is now easier than ever to get the food you want as fast as possible. What if what you really want is a nice meal out with friends, something that provides a great social atmosphere in addition to delicious food? You can download an app for that.

Actually, you can download several, depending on what you consider the toughest part about finding a place to eat. If you can’t tell if a restaurant is better for a first date or a business meeting, use Hoppit, the “world’s first ambience search engine for restaurants and bars”. If you’re worried about missing a meeting if you pop out for lunch at work, try Allset, where you can book a table, pre-order food, and pay in advance, going to the restaurant simply for the actual consumption of your meal. If you don’t want to miss a night with your friends but you’re watching what you eat, Myfitnesspal now offers menu information for over 500,000 restaurants. Or, if you’re interested in the high-quality dishes offered at restaurants but have no desire to actually go out to eat, you can order from Eat First, an “online restaurant”. Top chefs prepare meals that customers pre-order, which are then delivered within a thirty-minute timeslot and reheated and served by the diner in their own home.

Apps have created whole new ways to dine.

The Future

So what’s next in the restaurant industry?

Customer service is continually improving with an increase in guest-facing technology. In some restaurants, diners can now order food themselves using their phones or tablets at each table, cutting down their wait times and decreasing the likelihood a server might make an error. For families, technology at the table means kids can play games while waiting.

If you have a favourite restaurant, chances are you will be rewarded for your patronage. A 2015 Restaurant Technology Study revealed that 53% of participating restaurants are letting customer engagement and guest loyalty drive their technology projects. Hopefully this will lead to better restaurant-diner communication, and allow restaurants to save valuable guest data such as allergy information and favourite meals.

Of course, people are also consulting their devices to inform themselves about restaurants. In a world where 80% of web users will change their mind about a buying decision if presented with a negative review, restaurants need to provide the best service they can to avoid giving their guests any reason to leave unhappy. That’s why restaurants are also embracing technology to improve their offering. Some chefs create tech labs where they can test their meals before serving them to a wider audience. Others are taking advantage of the cloud to share recipes across multiple locations, as well as to order inventory “just-in-time” to provide the freshest ingredients to guests.

Has technology taken away the social aspect of dining?

However, a complete technological interface is not a feasible option for every restaurant out there. While planning a dinner out may be a hassle for some, other diners enjoy traditional sit-down meals. Not every ambience is suitable for iPad ordering, and not every customer checks reviews before dining out. Some people enjoy suggestions from waiters and others want to have a conversation without the interference of smartphones.

Luckily, technology can be a blessing for the inner workings of a restaurant as well. New mobile terminals make it easier for small businesses to accept payments by card rather than just cash, cutting down the possibility of fraud or theft by employees. Apps like Shopbox allow restaurant owners to track their sales and inventory in real time.

It is inevitable that restaurants will continue to embrace new advances in technology to present their culinary vision to the world. Whether you’re looking to take your date on a romantic, candlelit evening, or you just want to get a taco as quickly as possible with your friends, there will always be a restaurant for you.

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